Martin Montminy

Causal contextualism holds that sentences of the form ‘c causes e’ have context-sensitive truth-conditions. We consider four arguments invoked by Jonathan Schaffer in favor of this view. First, he argues that his brand of contextualism helps solve puzzles about transitivity. Second, he contends that how one describes the relata of the causal relation sometimes affects the truth of one’s claim. Third, Schaffer invokes the phenomenon of contrastive focus to conclude that causal statements implicitly designate salient alternatives to the cause and effect. Fourth, he claims that the appropriateness of a causal statement depends on what is contextually taken for granted or made salient. We show that causal invariantism can explain these linguistic data at least as well as contextualism. We then argue that pace Schaffer, some causal sentences are always correct and can never be plausibly denied, regardless of the context.

We propose an original response to Derk Pereboom’s four-case manipulation argument. This response combines a hard-line and a soft-line. Like hard-liners, we insist that the manipulated agent is blameworthy for his wrongdoing. However, like soft-liners, we maintain that there is a difference in blameworthiness between the manipulated agent and the non-manipulated one. The former is less blameworthy than the latter. This difference is due to the fact that it is more difficult for the manipulated agent to do the right thing. We explain how we can make sense of this notion of difficulty in terms of Fischer and Ravizza’s notion of reasons-responsiveness.

I raise three new objections against Robert Kane’s account of ultimate responsibility based on what he calls self-forming actions (sfa s). First, the ultimate responsibility that we have for our character is very limited, since, according to Kane’s model of character development, our character is shaped by sfa s for which we are only minimally responsible. Second, it is not desirable to rely on sfa s to shape our character. There are much better alternatives. Third, given what typically motivates our sfa s, we only rarely satisfy the conditions on responsibility for the changes in character that our sfa s give rise to.

I present cases where the same act appears to be both harmful and beneficial, raising doubt about a common assumption concerning harm. Given the possibility of such cases, to assess whether an act is harmful, we should compare it not with a single alternative act, but with a range of relevant alternative acts. Relevance, I argue, depends in part on norms. I show how my account solves a number of problems faced by standard counterfactual accounts. I also explain how the account distinguishes between harmful and harmless omissions. I then show that if we adopt a particular view about the individuation of actions, my account can be reconciled with the principle that an act may not be both harmful and beneficial. Finally, I extend my account to harmful natural events.

Résumé J’examine la thèse défendue par Donald Davidson selon laquelle un être ne peut avoir des pensées que s’il a été en communication linguistique avec quelqu’un d’autre par le passé. Cette thèse, que j’appelle « l’interprétationnisme radical », dérive de la thèse A selon laquelle il est nécessaire d’avoir les concepts de croyance et de vérité objective pour avoir des croyances, et de la thèse B voulant que la communication linguistique soit requise pour l’acquisition du concept de vérité objective. En réponse à A, je préconise un point de vue contextualiste, selon lequel les normes d’attribution de croyances dépendent du contexte conversationnel. Le contextualisme entraîne non pas que A est fausse, mais qu’elle doit être relative à un contexte. Je montre par ailleurs que contrairement à ce qu’affirme B, l’interaction avec autrui n’est pas nécessaire pour acquérir le concept de vérité objective. Je conclus que les arguments de Davidson soutiennent au mieux l’interprétationnisme modéré, c’est-à-dire l’idée selon laquelle un être a des pensées si et seulement si ces pensées sont interprétables par un interprète pleinement informé.I examine Donald Davidson’s thesis that a creature cannot have thoughts unless it has had a linguistic communication with another creature. This thesis, which I call “Radical Interpretationism”, derives from the claim that it is necessary to have the concepts of belief and objective truth in order to have beliefs and the claim that linguistic communication is required to acquire the concept of objective truth. In response to, I put forward a contextualist viewpoint, according to which the norms of belief attribution are context-dependent. Contextualism entails not that is false, but that it must be relativised to a context. I then show that contrary to what says, interaction with others is not necessary to acquire the concept of objective truth. I conclude that Davidson’s arguments at best support moderate interpretationism, that is, the view that a creature has thoughts if and only if these thoughts are interpretable by a fully-informed interpreter.